Scientific article
OA Policy
English

Suppressed Magnetic Circular Dichroism and Valley-Selective Magnetoabsorption due to the Effective Mass Anisotropy in Bismuth

Published inPhysical Review Letters, vol. 117, no. 1, 017402
Publication date2016
Abstract

We measure the far-infrared reflectivity and Kerr angle spectra on a high-quality crystal of pure semimetallic bismuth as a function of magnetic field, from which we extract the conductivity for left- and right-handed circular polarizations. The high spectral resolution allows us to separate the intraband Landau level transitions for electrons and holes. The hole transition exhibits 100% magnetic circular dichroism; it appears only for one polarization as expected for a circular cyclotron orbit. However, the dichroism for electron transitions is reduced to only 13%, which is quantitatively explained by the large effective mass anisotropy of the electron pockets of the Fermi surface. This observation is a signature of the mismatch between the metric experienced by the photons and the electrons. It allows for a contactless measurement of the effective mass anisotropy and provides a direction towards valley polarized magnetooptical pumping with elliptically polarized light.

Keywords
  • Far-infrared
  • Kerr angle
  • Semimetal
  • Bismuth
  • Landau level
  • Dichroism
Citation (ISO format)
DE VISSER, Pieter Jan et al. Suppressed Magnetic Circular Dichroism and Valley-Selective Magnetoabsorption due to the Effective Mass Anisotropy in Bismuth. In: Physical Review Letters, 2016, vol. 117, n° 1, p. 017402. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.017402
Main files (1)
Article (Published version)
accessLevelPublic
Identifiers
ISSN of the journal0031-9007
397views
206downloads

Technical informations

Creation20/11/2019 06:54:00
First validation20/11/2019 06:54:00
Update time15/03/2023 18:24:48
Status update15/03/2023 18:24:48
Last indexation02/10/2024 16:31:59
All rights reserved by Archive ouverte UNIGE and the University of GenevaunigeBlack